Tumblr and SEO
Melissa Chang’s Why I’m kissing Tumblr a sad, sad good-bye is already a quick read (so go read it), but here’s the gist:
I didn’t know this about Tumblr. I didn’t know that the pages wouldn’t be indexed well (or show up high) on Google. I knew that Tumblr doesn’t have comments. And I knew that Tumblr didn’t have a search engine built in. These things I decided to live with.
But I didn’t know that Tumblr had a search engine optimization (SEO) problem.
I’m not an expert on SEO for a variety of reasons, but I wouldn’t jump to these conclusions at all. My thinking is that any problems are expressly related to how one’s template is designed and content is constructed — specifically in terms of relevant meta-tags, page titles, and usage of key words within text posts.
Melissa compares her Google referrals from a Tumblr blog to a WordPress blog, and this comparison actually helps illustrate important differences between them. One of the relevant WordPress blogs has meta “description” and “keyword” elements in the html, while the Tumblr blog in question does not. Again, I’m not an expert on SEO, but I assume these are basic starting points.
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Finally, there are some stats on Google referrals to the Tumblr blog vs. the WordPress one. Check out the post for specifics, but here’s one nugget of data: From March 13 to May 8, her Tumblr-based blog got 17 Google referrals. That is pretty sad, and I can’t begin to explain it.
For the exact same period of time, Google sent topherchris.com 772 referrals with 385 distinct queries. I’m not going to rest my case on this statistic alone, but I do think it’s constructive to look at a wide range of user experiences before any sweeping proclamations are made.
Comments? Am I missing something?
I think the real question that should be asked is, do search engine referrals that perhaps result from SEO, actually result in loyal readers/users? Melissa writes about really enjoying the Tumblr experience. One common thing I read about Tumblr is that people say how much they start posting with the Tumblr tools vis-a-vis, say, Blogger. If the Tumblr tools facilitate your production/creativity, that seems far more important to me than SEO in attracting and retaining users. SEO, of course, is not an end, but a means to an end, and that end is to get people to, in Melissa’s case, know about the artist she’s promoting.
SEO just means optimizing integration into a particular community. With respect to Google, we’re talking about the internet’s largest and most relevant community, probably—and SEO means increasing your prominence in that community. However, Tumblr is a relevant community as well. You might be better off, for instance, trying to optimize prominence in Tumblr instead of just the search space at large. (That is, operating under the notion that both isn’t possible.) Features such as reblog, which don’t work between communities (I dont think I can reblog a blogger post, only quote it), operate like SEO but for the Tumblr community.
Well these are tradeoffs to be made by the user, but they exist and shouldn’t be brushed aside.
